Fiery, bluesy, gospelized post-Coltrane bebop; blowing in from Texas, massive like Rollins. From 1975, this is one of the outstanding jazz records of that decade, and Harper’s best, with trumpeter Virgil Jones (who you know from sessions with Roland Kirk, Charles Tolliver and McCoy Tyner), pianist Joe Bonner (Pharoah Sanders, Harold Vick, Khan Jamal), David Friesen on bass and Malcolm Pinson on drums.

Two contrasting, early-1960s Lansdowne LPs: Movement (with Shake Keane) includes three JH free-forms, a Michael Garrick, and the haunting Morning Blue; High Spirits re-presents the Broadway musical.

Hard bop burners and heart-melting ballads by a crack band including the great drummer Phil Seamen, and bassist Coleridge Goode, an anchor-man of our own London Is The Place For Me series.
‘Joe plays so fiercely on the record that at times it seems as though he’s about to blow his alto apart’ (Coleridge Goode).
‘Shepherd’s Serenade… always a big one! Great reissue’ (Gilles Peterson).
Newly mastered; with extended notes.

‘Absolutely essential,’ says All About Jazz.

‘Perhaps the best representation of a typical Joe Harriott Quintet gig of the period, combining as it does straight-ahead tracks with his free-form work… it opens with the easy swing of Morning Blue with Harriott’s alto warm, sunny and optimistic and Shake Keane’s flugelhorn light as air… Count Twelve is pure bebop rooted in the blues with some simply lovely flugelhorn from Keane and delightful piano from Pat Smythe. The relationship between Goode and drummer and Bobby Orr here is almost symbiotic, while Harriott’s own solo is wild and free-flowing.
‘Michael Garrick’s quirky Face in the Crowd follows. It’s a fine, angular performance that sits well with Harriott’s own more abstract writing. Revival is one of the saxophonist’s most Caribbean-inflected tunes and is perhaps the record’s highlight, whilst Garrick’s Blues On Blues reveals perfectly how very, very good this group really was.
‘The album concludes with three tracks: Spaces, arguably the most abstract piece Harriott ever recorded; the fine, if mainstream bop Spiritual Blues, with some great bowed bass from Goode and excellent drums from Bobby Orr; and the album’s title track has an intensity not found in all of Harriott’s free form work. It’s a stunning group tour de force, again building from comparatively simple melodic materials into something that is dark, brooding and even slightly unsettling.’

‘First issued in 1985 by Hal Willner’s Shemp label. With its unconventional lineup featuring steel drums, Latin percussion, and French horns, along with the co-leaders’ drum-kit and piano, it is among the most wonderful outings of its decade. Pullen was in top form, his inside-outside approach to the keyboard perhaps optimally heard on the exuberant Double Arc Jake, where the bright melody suddenly breaks into pieces, snapping back into miraculous shape. The band includes Hamiet Bluiett on baritone saxophone and Ricky Ford on tenor saxophone, along with Buster Williams on bass, Francis Hayes on steel pans, and a special brass section led by Sharon Freeman on the seventeen-minute Goree.’

The first time out for this near-mythical recording by the co-founder of the Tribe label.
Funky, spiritual jazz, with Phil Ranelin, Harold McKinney, Kareem Harris and the crew, in 1975.
Decent booklet, too, with a history of the label, and never-before-seen archival photos and rare ephemera from its mid-1970s heyday.

The story goes that Giant Steps is indebted to the harmonic ideas of Hasaan, with whom Coltrane practised intensively in the early fifties; also Trane’s so-called ‘sheets of sound’. Certainly the pianist was already hallowed on the Philadelphia jazz scene by the time of the 1964 Atlantic LP entitled The Max Roach Featuring The Legendary Hasaan.
The recordings presented here are from the follow-up session, the next year, with Odean Pope, Art Davis and Kalil Madi. Atlantic shelved them when Hasaan was jailed for narcotics possession straight afterwards; and till recently they were thought lost, despite the keen interest of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, amongst others.
Hasaan plays with a quietly raging restlessness, deeply passionate and rawly personal, climbing the walls of the influences of Monk and Elmo Hope, and churning over the full range of swing and bop traditions, with sharp turns in all directions. You can hear him breaking through the ‘modern sounds’, as Benny Golson put it, ‘into something very esoteric. I guess you could say his brakes didn’t work. He was quite a character.’ ‘Almost avant-garde,’ for Philly Joe Jones, ‘but correct’.
Saxophonist Odean Pope played for two decades with Max Roach. He was a member of Catalyst; he started his own Saxophone Choir. At 26, on his recording debut, he’s magnificent here. Art Davis is the bass player on stone classics like Africa/Brass and Olé, Ready For Freddie and Inception, Max Roach’s Deeds, Not Words and Pharoah Sanders’ Rejoice. In the previous decade in New York, Kalil Madi had drummed for the likes of Billie Holiday, Jackie Paris and Mongo Santamaria; later he worked with Gene Harris’ Three Sounds and Charles Gayle.
Elegantly presented, expertly restored, this is wonderful music, a genuine jazz holy grail.
It’s a must, hotly recommended.

With a freshness, simplicity and directness missing from his estimable later work, this 1977 inauguration of Fourth World still retains its magic. Microtonality and the other lessons of his three years with Pandit Pran Nath articulate a blend of electric-era Miles, Terry Riley and raga, featuring processed trumpet over a bed of mbira, talking drum, kanjul and tabla, and recordings of the sea, barking dogs, tropical birds and night creatures. From Don Cherry’s imminent, like-minded Codona project, Nana Vasconcelos is in full effect.